The Trump administration has been forced into damage control after the US President admitted deliberately downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus early in the pandemic in explosive interviews with veteran journalist Bob Woodward.
Trump gave 18 on-the-record interviews to the famous Watergate journalist for his highly anticipated new book, details of which have been leaked to the media ahead of its arrival in American bookshops next week.Credit:In a February interview with Woodward, Trump described the coronavirus as "deadly stuff" – even as he was publicly predicting it would miraculously disappear and favourably comparing it to the seasonal flu.
In March, after his rhetoric on the virus had become more serious, Trump told Woodward: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."Trump revealing he had built a secret new nuclear weapons system in the US; Woodward reports Anthony Fauci, the federal government's top infectious disease expert, saying of Trump: "His attention span is like a minus number. His sole purpose is to get re-elected."
At a press conference after details of the book emerged, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed: "The President never downplayed the virus."
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